Enabling Systems Modeling Language Authoring in a Collaborative Web-based Decision Support Tool

The Systems Modeling Language (SysML) is gaining traction within the systems engineering community to define complex systems. To date all SysML authoring tools are single-user, thick-client software applications geared towards only model definition, forcing sequential model development and losing an opportunity to parallelize effort. Additionally, the completed model is not in and of itself able to execute tradespace exploration or constraint optimization. Most complex system development occurs in geographically disparate teams working on various components of the model concurrently, which introduces a process complexity in configuration management and slows progress. Although extensions to thick-client applications and separate software applications have attempted to solve these issues, the authors pose a different solution. This paper describes a web-based SysML authoring tool which provides real-time collaboration. The goal is to offer an experience where all users have up-to-date information and can concurrently modify the model. The authors describe how this tool has been incorporated with the Framework for Assessing Cost and Technology (FACT), an effort spearheaded by the Marine Corps System Command as a real-time, collaborative modeling, simulation and design web-service. FACT's data schema is based on SysML, providing a unique use case implementation of the benefits of the SysML authoring tool described.